MSI launches two AMD Opteron motherboards

MSI HAS officially introduced two new motherboards for the AMD Opteron platform, one uniprocessor and one dual. The dually board is not new news, as it has been known about for quite some time. What is really new is the uniprocessor design, which makes it the third single Opteron motherboard to be launched - Asus and Tyan having launched the other two.

What makes this board interesting is that it uses the same layout as the dual design, but is shipped without the parts that would make it a dually.

Having the memory controller on the processor itself makes what MSI has done practical and worthwhile. This approach also saves design, development, and qualification time. It will be interesting to see if other motherboard makers follow MSI's example.

This cost saving approach might not endear those where aesthetics is as important as performance. Having an eyesore where the second processor socket would normally be will likely turn away many of the case modder brigade. So it will be interesting to see if MSI adds support for AMD's upcoming Athlon 64 FX. µ